Religious Pron: Preparing the Way: 1 of 3

Apr 7, 2025, 1:49 PM

One of the cool things about the study of history is that we can read the exact same words that people thousands of years ago read themselves.

The context and meanings sometimes change, but it’s not as if we have no cues at all why they thought the way they did. They flat out tell us on occasion, by quoting texts themselves.

Luke 3:3
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

“As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:”
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness…”

Every one of those names and titles is corroborated by Roman historians, and the 15th year would have been 28 AD.

In ancient Israel, there were two threads of thought that came together in the 1st Century AD in the Roman province of Judea. One was the somewhat newer idea that the world was going to eventually end. And the second was the older idea that someone would always lead Israel out of the mess they continually seemed to find themselves in.

As to the end of the world, not every religion sees, or saw, existence that way. In the East, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and other reincarnation religions all see existence as an endless cycle…sort of a merry-go-round you never get off of. You might grow spiritually, or even regress, as you ride, but the ride never stops.

In 2012, there was a great ‘End of the World’ scare because the Mayan 5,125-year calendar was nearing its end date. To the Mayans that would have been no big deal. It would be like us freaking out because December 31 is coming. We simply expect our 365-day year to start again on Jan1, and the Mayans assumed their 5,125 year calendar would start again on their year 1.

But if you take a people that think one way, and put them in the context of a people that think another way, you get stuff like the big 2012 freak out. Unless one has particular insight into the inner workings of the universe, those people probably got the ideas they have, on anything, because they read it somewhere (in the written tradition), or someone told them, (in the oral tradition.) And all that is important because it helps to better understand the ancient Israelites.

As I mentioned, there was an element of the Jewish population, the Pharisees, that believed in resurrection (a sort of limited reincarnation) and a definitive end to the world. They were sort of the country preachers of their day. They were scholars of the Torah, and holy men, and teachers, but they were only one of two major factions in Israel at the time (along with two other smaller factions).

The other major faction was the Sadducees, the priests and Temple maintenance class, sort of the “Jerusalem city slickers.’ They didn’t believe in resurrection, and surprisingly, they didn’t believe in the end of the world. They didn’t believe in what the prophets had to say, either. Pretty much, if it wasn’t in the Torah, they didn’t have a use for it.

Think, “If Moses didn’t write it, or hand it down to us from God, it can’t be trusted.” That was the Sadducee mindset. “Moses didn’t talk about afterlives, or the end of the world, so we don’t buy any of that country preacher stuff.”

The Sadducees were old school (since about 1300 BCE). And ideas like resurrection and the end of the world was new school stuff, from Isiah (700 BCE), and Daniel (150 BCE), and of course Revelation (90ish AD). Most of it in the context of Israel being demolished by first the Assyrians, and then the Babylonians. I imagine the thinking went, “if we can be wiped out in today’s world, it’s not a stretch to think that we, and the whole world, could be wiped out forever.” That makes some sense looking at it after your earthly world has been wrecked by invading foreigners.

The Sadducees couldn’t of course deny that other books of the soon-to-be-Bible existed (it didn’t fully exist yet), they just didn’t agree with most of them, or interpreted them differently than the Pharisees did. So all of the prophet’s works scattered throughout the Old Testament from Obediah through Micah through Daniel, the Sadducees discounted.

That starts to show one how radically split ancient Judaism was even back then. Two thousand years later it’s easy to lump all those folks together. But in their day, they were as divided on issues as much as we are. Q: How many opinions are there? A: How many people are there.

That’s kind of a shock because now, MOST of the Bible (61 out of 66 books, specifically) is presented almost completely from the Pharisee perspective. Farm living might not have been for everyone back then, but there was a benefit to being spread out all over the rural Judean countryside.

Mainly, you didn’t all die when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. And so your view, and your story, and your opinion, was the only one that was left to be told, among both the Jews themselves, and future Gentiles.

The Sadducees do appear several times in the Bible through, but because so much of the Bible is interpreted through a Pharisee lens, the Sadducee philosophy is kind of obscured. One of the more famous run-ins with the Sadducees is when Jesus (a quasi-Pharisee himself; he certainly believed in resurrection) has a head-to-head with the Sadducees, and takes on their non-resurrection belief.

Matt 22:23
“That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him.”

Long story short, if a woman ends up with 7 husbands who all die, who will she end up with in heaven according to the Pharisee idea of resurrection?

“Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

So here, the Sadducees are trying to poke a hole in the Pharisee idea of resurrection itself. Jesus gives them an answer they weren’t expecting – there won’t be marriage in Heaven.

Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

So the Good News, for some, is that you won’t have your current wife (or husband) in heaven.

How Jesus knew that he doesn’t say, and no one asked him. And then, he takes the opportunity to drop a bomb on the Sadducee argument:

“But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

Basically saying, since scripture says ‘God IS the God of Abraham’, and doesn’t say ‘God WAS the God of Abraham’, then Abraham must still be alive after his earthly death. Not a bad comeback, if one relies on scripture completely.

The reason for all this prelude is to show that history tends to homogenize things, both people, and texts. The reality is that they can be pretty black and white in their time. And ancient Israel was far from homogenous. The Pharisees saw some pretty big issues in one way, the Sadducees in another.

Even in our own American Revolution there weren’t as many patriots in the South as people might think. There were a LOT of loyalists, who were happy that the crown gave them all that fertile Southern land they were living on. There were so many loyalists, in fact, that the British built their entire 1780-81 war campaign on the popular support they expected to receive in the South, and got. In the South, the American Revolution was really the first American Civil War, with neighbor vs neighbor, just like Pharisees vs. Sadducees.

So this is sort of a lead-in to a bigger project, which I might call “Jesus In His Own Words.” Because what I want to know is what Jesus thought of himself. Not what the Pharisees, or the Sadducees, or Mark, or Matthew, or Luke, or even Paul, thought of Jesus.

But that’s a big job and will take some time. For starters, we’ll take a smaller bite and focus on another guy who’s in every Gospel, just like Jesus, named John the Baptist.

So think of this shorter, three-part mini-series as Preparing the way. Next time, John.

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Religious Pron: Preparing the Way: 1 of 3

Re: Religious Pron: Preparing the Way: 1 of 3

There is no gender in Heaven.

Re: There is no gender in Heaven.

You just read it, we will be like the angels.

Re: You just read it, we will be like the angels.

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